Rob Fess spends about three days a week sitting at a grand piano inside Nemours Children's Hospital in Orlando, playing music he started writing as he worked through his own recovery from PTSD, depression and substance use disorder. The Army veteran says the keys have become a lifeline both for himself and for the young patients who stop to listen.
Fess first began returning to the piano during his deployment to Iraq in 2007 and 2008, occasionally playing during downtime, according to WFTV. He later served in Afghanistan in 2011 and 2012 as an embedded police adviser in Kabul. He had taken piano lessons from third through sixth grade, a foundation he leaned on decades later when music became something closer to survival.
After his military service and a career in law enforcement, Fess said he struggled with PTSD, depression and substance use disorder, per the same report. He moved to Florida in 2018, and in 2019 he began composing original piano music as he worked through recovery. “It helps quiet the chaos in my mind,” Fess said.
From Hospital Visits to a Regular Gig at the Piano
Fess connected with Nemours through visits when his son was younger, noticing a grand piano in the hospital. He eventually reached out to the hospital's volunteer services, and he now plays at Nemours Children's Hospital in Orlando approximately three days a week, the station's report notes. Nemours describes its Creative Arts Therapy program separately as an evidence-based clinical service, noting that its therapy team serves inpatient units and the hospital's infusion center, according to Nemours.
Fess says he has watched children settle as they listen to his music, and he has spoken with veterans who told him his playing helped them find a moment of peace. A young girl once gave him a blue rose during one of his visits. “Moments like these remind him why he plays,” the outlet reported, describing the encounter as one of the reasons he keeps coming back.
Music as Emotional Outlet and Compass
Fess said piano became a way to manage emotional pain and bring comfort and peace to others, and that it allowed him to express emotions he often could not put into words. “Helping others through my music has become an important part of helping myself,” he said. One of his compositions, titled Everywhere I Go, reflects the relationships, challenges and lessons people encounter throughout life.
Research into music's role in pediatric care offers some context for why hospitals have leaned into the practice. A pediatric-care chapter describes music therapy's primary goals as helping children cope with hospitalization, manage pain and anxiety, express emotion, receive sensory stimulation and experience a more normalized hospital environment, according to a chapter published by Springer. A separate nine-month study described in the same chapter followed 20 children with chronic diseases in individualized music therapy sessions and found positive effects on emotional well-being.
A February 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis examined 17 randomized controlled trials involving 1,871 children and found that perioperative music was associated with lower preoperative anxiety and reduced postoperative pain, though the review rated the certainty of evidence as very low to low for all outcomes, per Wiley Online Library. Fess's piano sessions are not part of a formal clinical program, but the broader research points to why music has found a place inside children's hospitals.
A Message for Others Still Struggling
Fess said leaving a service-centered career can mean losing familiar routines, structure and identity, a loss he has tried to work through using music as his anchor. “Even at our lowest moments, we still have something valuable to offer the world,” he said. He added that recovery takes time, effort, support and determination, but that rebuilding a meaningful life is possible.
Fess said he hopes his story will encourage people struggling after military service or facing mental health challenges of their own. For now, he keeps returning to the piano bench at Nemours, using the music to quiet his own mind while offering a few minutes of calm to the families around him.
